The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is situated in a difficult geopolitical position, sharing borders with Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Israel, plus the occupied territories in the West Bank. In June 2025 Israel attacked Iran in an armed conflict that is now often called the Twelve-Day War. The 6th edition of the Amman International Film Festival (AIFF) took place only a few days later, so security questions might have been a concern for some of the invited guests. Yet the entire stay was perfectly safe. The ongoing war in Gaza inevitably was a predominant topic, as was the whole question of Palestine as such. The festival showed its solidarity with Gaza not only in speeches, but by choosing a poignant short film for the opening ceremony. Upshot by Maha Haj not only names Palestine as its country of origin, it is also a strong indictment of Israel’s occupation policies.
An elderly couple, played by Palestinian superstars Mohammad Bakri and Areen Omari, lives in a remote place, deliberately turning their backs to a world not even allowed in by the means of digital devices. They are constantly talking about their children, who seem to be in close touch, while living their lives in different circumstances. When a young man shows up at the garden entrance, and presents himself as a journalist who would like to ask a few questions, he gets rejected first for disturbing the desired isolation. Only after showing some humiliating patience in bad weather, does he come to sit at the couple’s table, where in conversation Upshot reaches its The Sixth Sense-like twist (spoiler alert): The children so lovingly talked about have in fact been conjured from the dead all the time. They were killed by Israel in a missile strike.
There was not a hint of diplomacy or Realpolitik in this short film. Selecting it for the opening ceremony was first and foremost a strong moral statement. And it contained an implicit declaration of what AIFF might see as its claim in the ever-shifting cinema of the Arabic region. Just taking a look at the filmographies of its two main actors is like getting an idea of what Palestinian cinema has looked like and might look like in the future – the AIFF being the place to champion Palestinian cinema while Palestine as an independent state does not (yet) exist.
Bakri debuted in Hanna K. (1983) by Costa-Gavras, an international production aiming to give a level-headed representation of what was, at that time, usually called the conflict in the Middle East, giving credit to both Jewish and Palestinian positions. One of Bakri‘s most important films is probably Haifa (Haïfa) by Rashid Masharawi, from 1996, where Haifa is not primarily the name of a place but of a troubled individual. Masharawi, who has come to be maybe the leading director of Palestinian cinema, was invited to the 6th AIFF to be part of the jury for the Non-Arab Film Competition, where he met legendary director Yousry Nasrallah from Egypt and Lebanese actor Georges Khabbaz.
Masharawi is even more prominent in the working life of Omari. She was already in his celebrated Curfew (Hatta Ishaar Akhar) from 1994, in Haifa she played next to Bakri (which makes Upshot also an homage to this earlier period of Palestine cinema), and she was in several of his later films until Laila’s Birthday (Eid milad Laila), released in 2008.
Both Bakri and Onari have worked beyond the Arabic word, but both are strongly rooted in the region (Bakri has also made several seminal documentaries) and are dedicating their main work to the cause of representing, producing and starring in a cinema that constantly anticipates its arrival in world cinema, while already being there. The state of Jordan in general and the AIFF in particular find one aspect of their role in the contemporary world in championing the Palestinian cause in a way that reveals the unique role of culture. Culture, and cinema as a strong part of it, is not a weapon, but an instrument. AIFF in 2025 played this instrument well, also by striking a strong first chord with the selection of Upshot for the opening ceremony.
By Bert Rebhandl
Edited by Amber Wilkinson
@FIPRESCI2025